No wide angle? No problem!

My travel lens solution for my Nikon D810 is the Nikon 28-300mm super-zoom. This enables me to walk around, without a bag full of lenses, that can get stolen. It also means I can capture things on the go when changing lenses, would mean the moment is lost, or you just end up annoying your family while they wait for you to faff around in the bag. I carry the camera on a Black Rapid strap: it sits on my right hip, ready to go if something interesting should appear (lens cap off, lens hood on).

The only downside to this is that, well, 28mm aint that wide. I can sometimes persuade my wife to carry my little Nikon 20mm f/2.8 AIS in here shoulder bag, ad have tried carrying it in my pockets before. The problem with this arrangement though, is if you swap out the 28-300mm for the 20mm, you now have a large 2 pound lens to carry around – which doesn’t really fit in your pocket. I sometimes hide the $1300 lens and come back for it, but this is far from ideal – even in remote locations where there’s no one around to walk off with it.

However, there is a modern day solution. On the odd occasion I need something wider than 28mm, I just make a wide angle pano, and stitch it in Photoshop. Here’s an example: for some reason, the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik has more than it;s fair share of basketball courts – just staring back atcha from the stone walls, gleaming limestone pavements and elegant towers. I couldn’t fit this into 28mm – not by a long way, so I took 2 shots at 28mm and gave them to Photoshop. Clicked all the boxes apart from the content aware fill of edges (the content in this case was too complex) and we get the result at the bottom. Not bad. Note – Lightroom is, as yet unable to do this correctly. It has a go, but there’s a definite seam every time, as it can’t deal with the wildly different angles.

To do this from Lightroom couldn’t be simpler. Adjust one image, sync these settings to the other one, select both images, right-click and select “Edit in.. | Merge to panorama in Photoshop”. Leave everything on auto and check all the boxes except content aware fill. Only check this one if the edges of the frame are simple (sky, water, grass etc). Click go, flatten the image, save and close. Your stitched panorama will appear back in Lightroom.